Student Program

Be Part of Something Unique!

The Digital Tech Academy is our new program open only to outstanding digital talents from all FAU degree programs and faculties! We impart all you need to follow your heart and passion for digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation. Work in interdisciplinary teams, get in touch with expert coaches and mentors, and develop your own pristine and validated business model.

What are the benefits of the Student Program?

Within one year, you will learn the newest state-of-the-art innovation methods and work in interdisciplinary teams on your entrepreneurial challenge. Choose either your own start-up idea or one of the highly enticing projects from your participants colleagues.
You´ll work with 24 other handpicked talents from FAU as well as our international expert coaches and mentors – a unique chance to widen your professional network globally. That´s also why we´ll have a sports track with yoga and strength training provided by professional athletes – there is no place you can´t learn something for your start-up!

All these skills and networks we provide will distinguish you significantly from other founders and entrepreneurs in your later work-life. And at the end of that one year, you´ll have developed your own pristine and validated business model empowering you to enter your chosen market.

Upon successfull completion of the program, each participant will also receive an official certificate by FAU at the end of the program. Besides, some participants will get a highly exclusive grant to visit one of the top universities worldwide to work on the international perspective of his or her project.

What are the projects and objectives?

As mentioned, you can work either on your own start-up idea, or on a project from our company partners – like the digitization of senses, or new smart materials.

After the 12 month program you will have:
+ an iterated Prototype
+ a validated Business Model
+ a validated Market Potential
+ a validated Financial Plan

What happens during this one year?

You will successfully complete many workshops which are organized as Block-Seminars on Fridays / Saturdays to make it easier for you to participate along your regular curriculum.
You get guided through the end-to-end Business design  process by learning each step of it by the following program:

+ Kick off with project partners, team formation & challenge assignment
+ Program Part I Research
+ Find
+ Trend Analysis -> Recognise trends
+ Discover -> Become an expert
+ Design -> Create your business model
+ Formulate
+ Validate -> Challenge the future scenario
+ Review -> Reflect the executed experiments
+ Decide -> Close first business plan iteration
-> Mid Term Presentation: Show your results to the world

+ Program Part II Develop
+ Foster
+ Discover -> Analyze your chosen market
+ Design -> Develop & iterate different prototypes
+ Validate -> Validate your prototypes through direct market research
+ Finalize
+ Review -> Adapt your prototypes to market feedback
+ Decide -> Decide upon your final product design
-> Final Demo Day: Present your product and pivot or proceed

In addition to the program we provide several digitization enabler too.
+ Workshop: In-house of a company to learn how to bring hardware/product together with software and what value add is created for the customers
+ Toolbox Conference: We will provide you a fully packed conference day with leading edge technologies which you can use immediately for any digitization project.
+ Emerging Technology Conference: We will provide you a sneak peak into some emerging technologies from the Gartner Hype Cycle cluster “Innovation Trigger”

How do I register?

The next fellows program is going to start on 25th of October 2019. For that, the next possible application period is between May 2018 and July 2019.

Send us an e-mail if you want us to notify you when the new application round starts

Get started with digitization, entrepreneurship and innovation now

As Germany´s most innovative university, FAU offers its students a huge variety of classes regarding the topics digitzation, innovation and Entrepreneurship. You can find an aggregated overview here:

Explore more than 100 lectures of the FAU concerning these hot topics…